Queen of Kings

by Maria Dahvana Headley

  Antony’s Roman troops, some fifty thousand men betrayed by his departure, deserted him, leaving Egypt with a fraction of the legions it had previously commanded, and Octavian declared victory, shouting his triumph from end to end of the world.

  Now he came nearly unopposed to the shores of Alexandria, held off only by Antony and his small remaining forces. He thought he’d already won the country.

  He had not.

  The ritual knife had been sharpened enough to kill without the victim noticing the wound. If the spell failed, however, it would not be Octavian who was killed. Cleopatra would never get close enough to him.

  No. If the summoning failed, it would be she who died, and by her own hand. She could not let the Romans take her as their captive, a trophy to parade in the streets of Italy. She and Antony had long since agreed that if the city were taken, they’d both commit suicide. It would be the only honorable course of action left to them.

  Where is he? Another jolt of panic ran through Cleopatra. It had been hours since the messenger was sent, hours since Antony should have returned.

  She shook herself back to focus. She could not stop to worry. There was no time. Brilliant crimson filled the agate goblet, and Sekhmet would accept it.

  She must, or Egypt would fall, and Cleopatra and Antony with her. The queen of Egypt was not ready to die.

  Thus far, this war had been fought entirely between mortals.

  Things were about to change.

  Cleopatra threw her hands into the air as she’d practiced, spinning like the desert winds, calling up the forces that lay stored in the sand. The guttural syllables of the spell twisted, clicking and melting from her mouth, her tongue tasting the bitter words and then flinging them out into the heavens.

  The door shook with a frantic pounding. Cleopatra stopped midphrase, the goblet poised over the bared teeth of the icon. Who was brave enough to interrupt the queen? She could think of only one person who would dare, and only one person who also knew how to access the secret passageway that led from the palaces to the mausoleum.

  “Antony?” she called, relief flooding her body. She stepped out of the sacred circle and ran to the door.

  It was not Antony but Cleopatra’s maid, Charmian, her eyes wild. She looked at Cleopatra’s bleeding hand and made a sound of dismay.

  “Where is Antony?” the queen asked her, and when the maid did not answer, she shook the girl by her shoulders. “Where is he? Why has he not responded to my messenger?”

  “They say he’s retreated into the Old City.” The girl paused. “Perhaps your message did not reach him.”

  “And?” Cleopatra prompted, her skin prickling with fear. Something had happened.

  “They say he came through the gates mad with rage. His men joined with Rome and abandoned him in the battle. He swears that you betrayed him.”

  Cleopatra felt the air in the room humming, the spell half complete.

  Why was this happening? What had she done wrong? She was a goddess. The New Isis. And Antony was her Osiris and Dionysus. Yet here she was, barricaded in her own half-finished mausoleum, caged with her treasure. Everything would be worthless without his love, everything broken.

  She looked down at the knife in her hand, at her blood already staining the blade. She felt the power in the room crackling in the air. She had not yet finished the spell, but it was begun.

  There was no turning back.

  4

  Mark Antony sat with his head in his hands, alternately raging and despairing. His mind flashed to the night before, to Cleopatra’s body in his arms, to her lips on his, and he shook his head, trying to rid it of the image. They’d pledged to die rather than surrender, and now—

  If she’d gone over to the side of Octavian, there was nothing left for Antony in heaven or on earth.

  In the days since the beginning of the invasion, he’d watched four legions of soldiers, once his loyal forces, assaulting Alexandria from the west. The enemy’s trumpets (and oh, what pain to call Rome his enemy, the place that had birthed him, the city that had been his mother and his love) drowned his speeches, and the men had no desire to listen.

  They hated him for Actium, and they were right to do so.

  He’d chosen Cleopatra over them, over everything.

  “Cleopatra belongs to Rome,” the head of the cavalry had said. To Rome, and not to Antony. How could he have been so stupid? She had never belonged to him.

  When he’d first met her, twelve years before, she’d only recently ceased belonging to Julius Caesar. Antony had summoned the queen to Tarsus to answer charges that she had financially assisted Cassius, the enemy of Rome who’d conspired in Caesar’s assassination.

  At the time, Rome was poor in the wake of several years of civil war. Egypt and her queen, the scion of generations of Ptolemaic royalty, were wealthy, not just in treasure but in grain. Antony needed her support, and if he had to prod her with allegations in order to get it, he was more than willing to do so.

  She sailed to him in a gilded barge with purple sails, beneath a canopy made of cloth of gold. Antony, apparently the only person in Tarsus who had not received knowledge of Cleopatra’s arrival, was left alone just as he was readying himself to address a crowd. He was bewildered by the sudden exodus of merchants and customers, but as he departed the marketplace, he caught the scent of eastern perfumes on the air and found himself drawn toward the water.

  Squinting into the sun, he finally detected a glittering presence, costumed as Venus, attended by servants dressed as cupids and nymphs. He sent a messenger to invite the queen to dinner. With her typical disregard for hierarchy, she instructed Antony to dine as her guest instead.

  They sat together after the feast, on the deck of her barge, the lamps above them sparkling like constellations. Her voice was low and musical, and she spoke to her various servants, and to the people of Tarsus as well, each in their own tongue. She flattered him with the comment that she’d been following his military career for years. Most seductively of all, she laughed, throwing her head back in pure delight, joking with him and teasing him, as though neither of them were persons of consequence, as though they were two children who’d met in the marketplace and were playing a game of riddles.

  Antony’s then wife, Fulvia, had no sense of humor. He had never heard her laugh.

  The evening ended in Cleopatra’s bedchamber. He had no shame; any man in his senses would have done the same.

  As he made his way to the queen’s rooms, already stiff with anticipation, Antony gloated, thinking himself tremendously clever. He would gain power over Cleopatra, and she would gain tenderness toward him, both of which would smooth their business dealings. He fumbled into her bedroom, peering into the dark, but she wasn’t there. He was running his hands over her pillows to be sure, when she leapt on him, a knife in her hands. He was so startled, he didn’t make a sound as he fell to the floor.

  “Rome wants to use me,” she said. “Is that true?”

  “Not Rome,” he said, grinning. “A Roman. And only for my own purposes.”

  “Surrender,” she said in his ear, kneeling atop him. He inhaled her scent, felt the soft skin of her thighs against his chest. Naked and shameless.

  “Surrender to me,” she repeated, and he nearly laughed. Did she not realize how small she was? He could span her waist with one hand. Did she not know she was a woman?

  His smile faded as he felt her lashing ropes around his wrists and tying him to the bed. He could not tell if she was playing with him or warring against him. The knife was sharp, that was certain. It pressed against his jugular.

  “I surrender,” Antony agreed, already plotting his next move. He would flip her onto her back and disarm her, and then there would be a conversation. What did she think she was doing? He was a general. He’d summoned her.

  “Then you are mine, Roman,” she said, and he heard the smile in her voice. She slipped forward, and he tasted her wetness. He forgot the knife.

  She did
not untie him until morning, and when she did, she laughed at his sore wrists.

  He was lost.

  Years passed. Fulvia died, and he married again, forced into a political alignment with Octavian’s sister, Octavia, but Cleopatra remained his true wife. Two years ago, he’d divorced Octavia and married Cleopatra in a formal ceremony. Even as Octavian declared himself an enemy, even as Antony was vilified in the streets of Rome, Cleopatra stood beside him, his equal.

  Twelve years had passed since their first meeting, and it was still as glorious as it had ever been. He glanced bitterly at his arm now and could still see the white marks her teeth had left on him that first night, the scar like a tattoo commemorating a victory. As the sun rose, he’d heard the words coming from his mouth, unplanned.

  “I love you,” he swore.

  It shocked him, but he knew it to be true, truer than anything else in his life. He held her face in his hands and looked into her eyes.

  “I am yours,” she told him. “You are mine, and I am yours.”

  Had she been lying even then?

  Of course he’d chosen her over his troops. She was his wife. There was no other option, but fifty thousand men, his dearest friends, his own soldiers, had become with that one decision his enemies. They’d gone back to Rome.

  Two days before, Antony, weary of sacrificing soldiers, had sent a letter challenging Caesar to man-to-man combat, the results of which would settle the war, but Octavian sent back a terse if cowardly reply: that the sort of combat Antony proposed, that of the common gladiator, was beneath the standards of Rome’s first citizen and that Antony had many other options if he wished to die. Antony had not expected better. The new Caesar had no reason to fight in such a contest. He had the city surrounded already, and Octavian’s army wanted Antony’s blood.

  “Traitor!” the men had sneered at Antony on the battlefield in the previous days. Traitor.

  Antony’s thoughts were disturbed by the sounds coming from the adjoining room.

  “I come on behalf of the queen,” a high, determined voice insisted. “I serve Cleopatra.”

  Antony swore. What was he doing here, at the mercy of her messages?

  His servant Eros entered the room and widened the door to admit a young boy who reminded Antony of his own small son, Alexander Helios. Had she chosen this messenger purposefully? He would not see his children again, whatever happened here.

  He imagined his wife on Octavian’s arm, her purple robes, her crown. Why wouldn’t she follow this new Caesar? He was to be the ruler of the world. Octavian would give her everything Antony had not. That prim boy, that self-righteous child, was to be emperor and she would rise with him. Empress Cleopatra.

  The messenger bowed his head in respect.

  “Say it,” barked Antony. “You waste my time.”

  “The queen is dead,” said the messenger.

  Antony thought he’d misheard. He leaned closer to the boy, looking him in the eye.

  “What did you say?”

  The boy spoke slowly, as though the words were painstakingly memorized.

  “The queen has killed herself. She betrayed you to the Romans, and in her guilt, she took her own life.”

  Antony stood very still, hearing the words echoing, and then fell to his knees, the room spinning around him. Though they’d talked of suicide, planned for it, he never imagined her dead. His mind filled with an image of her desecrated body, bruised and battered, held in the air as a trophy by Octavian’s centurions.

  She loved him, or she would not have died for him. If she betrayed him, it no longer mattered. He would not be apart from her for long.

  “Eros,” he said. His servant ushered the boy out the door, giving him some coins for his toil.

  Antony removed his armor, piece by piece, until he stood before his servant in only his tunic. He passed the man his sword.

  “Do you remember your promise?” he asked.

  “I do,” said Eros, but his eyes were uncertain. They’d been together for years, and Mark Antony had been a good master to him. He hesitated.

  “Then fulfill it,” Antony said, spreading his arms, exposing his chest. “Go to Octavian when this is done. End the war before any other men die. He will reward you, and you may go then and do as you will.”

  Eros nodded, and drew up the sword over his head, but at the last moment, he turned the blade, and stabbed it into his own body.

  “No!” Antony yelled, leaping forward to catch the hilt, a second too late.

  Everything was crumbling. All the precision of the Roman army, all the years spent as a general, and it had come to this: chaos, desperation, his city invaded, his beloved dead, and his manservant sprawled on the floor, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, his eyes glazing over even as Antony knelt beside him. Antony felt his mind twisting, felt the walls tilting around him.

  Outside the door of the room, another messenger demanded entrance. Antony tried to plan. He’d be taken prisoner. He’d be transported to Rome, put on trial, buried away from her.

  Antony pulled the sword from Eros’s body. From the pouch at his waist, he took two coins and placed them over his servant’s eyes. He could do that much to help the man to his rightful place in Hades.

  “I come from the queen!” The door rattled. “Cleopatra demands that I speak with Mark Antony!”

  Antony swayed against the wall, hearing her name. She’d never call for him again, never laugh with him again.

  “I am yours,” he had told her, wherever she was. “I am yours.”

  With all his strength, he drove the blade into his stomach. A fiery pain, his body resisting death, just as his mind had. Despite the pain, he felt a sense of deep satisfaction. There would be no more uncertainty. It was done. He closed his eyes and lay slowly back on the floor, thinking of his wife.

  The door shook again, someone throwing himself at it.

  “The queen requests that Mark Antony join her at their mausoleum! She informs him that all is not lost!” the messenger shouted from outside the room.

  “The queen is dead, you fool,” his soldier shouted in return. “The queen has killed herself.”

  “She has not!” said the messenger. “I have just left her company. I was delayed in the city!”

  The door burst open, and a horrified soldier stumbled over Eros’s body and to Antony’s side.

  “He’s wounded!” the legionary cried to the other guards outside the door, and they crowded into the room.

  “No,” said Antony, calm now, feeling his life running out. “I am dead.”

  “But I recognize the man,” the soldier said. “He is the queen’s secretary, Diomedes, and he says that the queen lives! The first messenger lied. She calls you to come to her.”

  Antony took a shuddering breath, trying to bring himself back to consciousness. It was too much to make sense of this. A false message? She lived?

  “Carry me to Cleopatra,” he ordered, and when he noted the hesitation on the men’s faces, he used a stronger voice. “You will take me to the queen. This will be your last duty in my service. Perform it well.”

  They dressed the wound as best they could, covered Antony to protect him from the eyes of enemies, and then lifted the pallet carefully onto their shoulders, and proceeded into the street.

  The mattress was a boat, and there was a stormy sea beneath him. Antony laid his hand over his eyes to shield them from the sun. The lighthouse rose into his vision, smooth and white, a perfect thing. He’d lived on Pharos island for a time, in a small house away from the city, at the foot of the great stone tower. It was just after his return from Actium, when his sorrow at his own betrayals was too much to bear in company.

  At the top of the tower, so high it could scarcely be seen, a golden statue of Zeus glittered in the sun. Antony smiled, seeing it still shining there even as he passed through the city, a witness to his own funerary procession.

  The only sounds he’d heard while he stayed in that house were those of wa
ves crashing up against the shore. There was no Rome, no legions, no love. He’d never felt so peaceful. He might have stayed forever in that little house, like a philosopher in his cave, but he craved company, drink, and jokes, and he dreamed of his wife. He walked back across the causeway and found everything at the palace as though he’d never left. Back into her arms he went then, and back to them he would go now. If he had died for her, let her see it done. Let there be an end.

  An Egyptian soldier, drunken and disheveled, bowed his head as Antony was carried past, thinking him dead already.

  “Is it the king you carry?” the soldier asked Antony’s men.

  “It is Mark Antony,” they answered.

  “You carry the king of Egypt, the honored husband of our queen,” the soldier said.

  Beneath his covering, Antony’s lips curved into a painful smile. He’d never imagined that he would die a king.

  5

  The boy darted back through Alexandria, singing to himself. He’d delivered his message to Mark Antony and seen the great man in person. He was still heroic to look at, despite the dirt of battle upon him. His dark hair was iced with silver. The boy had seen it in the dim light of the building. But his arms were still ropy with muscle, and his chest was wide and armored.

  One day, perhaps, the boy would grow up to be a warrior, and if he did, he hoped he would be tall and strong like Mark Antony. The great soldier looked down upon the boy, and the boy saw that he controlled the sun and the moon. He patted the boy’s shoulder. His body still vibrated with the honor.